I’ve been trying to go to the gym regularly. Really, I have. I’m not as good at it as some of my friends, but I’m trying. Despite that, I didn’t make it at all last week (being on-call for work is my excuse — being paged in the middle of a workout sucks). Finally, last night I went. It was a big accomplishment.

I don’t really mind going most of the time, but I hate doing cardio. It’s sooooo boring. Thankfully, I have my iPod to keep me company. That’s the only way I can stay sane while I’m doing cardio. So you’ll understand why I was upset when I climbed onto the elliptical trainer last night, fired up my iPod and discovered that it was completely empty. Not a single song, not one tv show. Nothing. ARGH!!! That was it. I immediately got off the machine, went to the locker room and changed to go home. I’d been defeated.

I’m blaming my work computer for this disaster. I plugged my iPod into it during the day yesterday to charge it, because the battery was really low. iTunes on my work computer doesn’t have any music in it, so obviously I don’t want to sync that library onto my iPod. I’m sure I told it not to sync when I plugged the iPod in. Yet for some reason, it apparently did anyway. The only conclusion I can reach is that my work computer wants to keep me from going to the gym. It wants me to be fat.

My email appears to be broken right now, do to some massive screwup by my hosting company. Since last night, DNS has been failing for some of my domains. I’ve been a Dreamhost customer for a long time, and I’ve defended them repeatedly. The bang for the buck factor is great. But geez this is annoying.

I’ve been on the other side of the equation. I’ve been responsible for keeping huge and complicated Internet sites up and running. I’ve had to deal with complex outages at inopportune times (is any time opportune for an outage?). So I have sympathy for them. But I also have very high standards for designing things to be reliable, and for resolving problems when they come up. A 12-hour plus outage is simply unacceptable.

If you need to reach me before this gets fixed, I send me an IM or a Facebook message or something. Or write to my work email address if you have it. Sorry :-(

Update: Things seem better now. Ugh.

If you have a website and you haven’t used Google Webmaster Central, and more specifically Webmaster Tools, you’re really missing out on some cool stuff. And I’m not just saying that because it’s one of the projects I work on ;-)

One of the things you’ll find in Webmaster Tools is a list of the most common search terms your website turns up for (not just the ones people have clicked on to get to your site). There are almost always a few “interesting” things in the list. My favorite of the moment for this site is “nude dress up games”. Huh? If you’re dressing up, how are you nude? And if you’re nude, can’t you think of any better games to play than dress up?

The great mysteries of life…

Michael White was my teacher for Improv 400, and he was undoubtedly one of the best teachers I’ve ever had for any subject. It was truly an awesome class. Michael is also a hypnotherapist, and he recently posted a podcast using hypnosis to help people overcome a fear of clowns. Even if you’re not afraid of clowns, it’s worth checking out!

(Via Creative Creativity.)

Awwww yeah! We’ve got our tickets and hotel reservation (tricky!) — we’re going to Nashville next summer for the CMA Music Festival! Neither of us have been to Nashville, so we’re both really excited.

Do any of you have any CMA Fest tips, or things we should see while we’re in Nashville?